It is common for corporate employees to use corporate resources (e.g., corporate email systems, corporate computers, corporate phones, etc.) for personal uses. Such mixed use of corporate resources for both corporate purposes and personal purposes introduces a number of problems with regards to the generation of backups and archives.
Mixed use of corporate resources causes the resources to include mixed personal and corporate data. Conventional backup and archival systems are not able to distinguish between the corporate and personal data. Accordingly, conventional backup systems simply backup all personal data along with the corporate data. This increases an amount of storage space that is used by the backup and archive systems. Additionally, there may be legal ramifications of the corporation backing up the users' personal data. Employees may also be uncomfortable with having their personal data backed up by the corporation. Moreover, when an employee leaves the corporation, the employee loses access to their personal data that has been archived or backed up by the corporation. Finally, employees who attempt to perform personal backups of their personal data that is on the corporate resources may inadvertently copy sensitive corporate data into the employee's personal backup.